Former Child Actor Sells Home to Finance Directorial Debut

Here at FishbowlLA, we are always on the lookout for adult continuations of a childhood acting career that do not involve drugs, DUIs, and-or compromising cell phone camera snaps. Today, we’ve got such a tale to share.

Sloane U’Ren, who acted in LA from age four through her teens before going on to study and work as an art director on movies such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Batman Begins, is now a first-time feature film director. Via a guest blog post on Melissa Silverstein’s indieWIRE page “Women and Hollywood,” she explains how she and her husband came to the decision to sell their UK home to finance her period sci-fi tale Dimensions: A Line, a Loop, a Tangle of Threads:

It all seemed quite natural. I’ve wanted to direct for a long time, though I never talked about it. It’s not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation and I didn’t want to be one of those people who talk about something, but never do it. I would talk about when I wanted to, when I was actually going to do it.

So my husband and I sold our home in Twickenham and got a few non-film industry, private investors to top up our funds. We’d heard too many stories of friends (and friends of friends) trying to raise a few million or more to make their film only to have an investor suddenly pull out… and they would have to start again, pounding the pavement, looking for more money.

Shot in and around Cambridge, Dimensions is set to premiere next month as part of that city’s annual film festival. Cool with a capital “C.”